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So what happened to the HN server?

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 133 posts

Re: So what happened to the HN server?

#61
post #21

Saturday, I thought: "This guy (PG) is really brave, everybody is nowadays using virtualized server environments on mulit-core machines and PG just gets some bare metal and puts his app on one core and one thread. WTF, this guy is a genius, single-threaded apps on bare metal FTW, this is so great and I am doing this too." After seeing this thing down for several hours -- and Google hate downtimes, they punish you ins…

Oh, that explains why this site is really slow occasionally.

Re: So what happened to the HN server?

#62
post #56
post #21

Saturday, I thought: "This guy (PG) is really brave, everybody is nowadays using virtualized server environments on mulit-core machines and PG just gets some bare metal and puts his app on one core and one thread. WTF, this guy is a genius, single-threaded apps on bare metal FTW, this is so great and I am doing this too." After seeing this thing down for several hours -- and Google hate downtimes, they punish you ins…

What would the benefits of using a virtualized server for a relatively small (in terms of server needs) site like HN be? The way I see it so far, is that virtualization is mostly beneficial for hosting companies that can provide cheaper hosting and have better isolation and easier resource allocation. But I can't think of any big benefits for the site owner, assuming they can afford a dedicated server, and I can see…

(Live) Migration is one nice feature of virtualization.

Re: So what happened to the HN server?

#63
post #35
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you say if Google.com was down for 2 hours due to a server upgrade? Do you pay Google for searching? Bonus points if you do actually. Their search API is limited to 100 a day, which is not a lot.

If you're using google search, you're paying google in ad impressions.

And what do you think these[1] are? HN has ads, they're just less conspicuous.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

Re: So what happened to the HN server?

#64
post #21

Saturday, I thought: "This guy (PG) is really brave, everybody is nowadays using virtualized server environments on mulit-core machines and PG just gets some bare metal and puts his app on one core and one thread. WTF, this guy is a genius, single-threaded apps on bare metal FTW, this is so great and I am doing this too." After seeing this thing down for several hours -- and Google hate downtimes, they punish you ins…

Virtualized environments vs. bare metal has never really been about performance. It's about whether you want to spend the time required to tend your servers, or whether you want to treat them as disposable.

Re: So what happened to the HN server?

#65

Apparently it is not out of the woods yet - the comment tab links to the front page.

Seems to be showing the homepage, not redirecting it. I think PG/RTM must have introduced a bug while fixing the problem. Have they no unit tests ;-D ?

Or maybe they removed the comment page because it was causing the crashes, possibly related to the Unicrud Twitter crashes?

Re: So what happened to the HN server?

#66
post #45

Fast is one thing. BUT I'd much rather get rid of the "this link has expired" syndrome. Fast is only impressive if the results are modern.

The superior results from my browser's back button far outweigh the inconvenience of the expired link. I click on a link from the "Ask" front page, reply to the top comment, and my comment appears in the thread. Next I click "back" on my browser and I'm back at the front page of "ask". I do that much more often than I hit an expired link.

Still, why not link to a page offset and just show what is current? Or include it with the current linking and automatically redirect? Pretty basic ux optimization.

Re: So what happened to the HN server?

#68
post #54
post #13

phew Almost thought HN was blocked here in China...

When blocked browser behave differently. btw I'm in Beijing too, maybe we met in open parties?

This looked more like the block you get when you are on the site's black list. How many HN readers are in Beijing? In zhongguancun?

Re: So what happened to the HN server?

#69
I have only one portal onto the Internet - this site. I check it first thing and last thing, and when it was down today I had a weird epiphany - I did not mind.

HN is not a service, its not a startup trying to get mindshare - its a (luvvie alert) community - and one where the downtime had a known and obvious cause and did not matter - rtm would fix it, I would catch up, I knew this thread would exist and I would still get insight into what is happening 12 hours ahead of everyone else.

I thought I would be more bothered - turns out I am emotionally invested, not emotionally dependant.

To PG et al, good luck with the fixes, and thanks.

Cheers

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